For Thee
by Nagia
Summary: ...because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls it tolls for thee. Beast Boy feels under appreciated. The other Titans are somewhat blind to this.


**For Thee**

_No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee._

—JOHN DONNE, Meditation 17

They laughed at him yet again, and though his green cheeks went pink, he let it go. He brushed the mockery off the way Robin would dust fingerprint powder off his coat and put the hurt in a little box somewhere.

He could deal with it. They didn't know. They didn't know that he was Garfield Mark Logan. They didn't know that his father had home schooled him and done a good job at it. They didn't see his intelligence. They _couldn't_ see his intelligence, because he kept it hidden.

He acted like an idiot to amuse them. He made stupid jokes and lame puns and pretended to be dumber than Bruce "Vapid-Smile" Wayne to make them laugh.

And they never got it. Even Robin, whom he had thought could see all the secrets inside of everybody, never saw his secret.

Why? Why did they never get it? Did they really think that he really thought that everything he said was normal?

Okay, so the Mad Mod incidents were always rather embarrassing (stupid, creepy little old man…). But he wasn't _that _stupid.

And yeah, his sense of humor sometimes seemed as highbrow as that of a nine-year-old kid's.

But he really wasn't as dumb as they thought he was.

-

"Come on, Beast Boy! Open the door!" Cyborg wailed.

Beast Boy gave his door a hard glare and pawed through the cardboard box.

_I know that book is somewhere in here…_ he scowled.

At length, he unearthed The Book. He knew it was The Book simply by the weight and the binding, so he flipped the cover open and began to look for that piece he'd found such a long time ago.

"Come on, man! You're turning into a recluse! You're turning into Raven!"

That one stung, but the hurt quickly turned to anger. He wasn't Raven. He wasn't some pretentious Goth with a "the world owes me" complex.

So what if he had been rich? So what if he knew he was smart? So what if he just wanted to sit down and read an old essay for a little while?

But, as usual, he shoved the anger down, so far down inside himself that he practically forgot he was angry. Like shoving your trash under the bed.

He found the essay and ignored Cyborg's shouting. His lips moved as he read; a habit he hadn't been able to rid himself of, no matter how hard he tried.

The Doom Patrol had teased him about it.

The Doom Patrol was dead.

At length, he shoved the books back into the cardboard box and shoved the box back into its rightful place under his bed.

As he moved towards his door, his gaze traveled around his room.

_I really ought to clean this dump up sometime._

-

Beast Boy fixed himself a salad (there _were_ better options than tofu) and headed into the living room, where the other Titans waited.

As usual, Robin sat between Starfire and Raven. Starfire sat a little closer to him than normal people would, practically sitting on his left thigh, while Raven was leaning a little away from him and reading a book.

Beast Boy took a seat next to Cyborg, kicked off his shoes, and stretched his legs out so that his feet were sitting in Cyborg's lap. Cyborg groaned and Beast Boy grinned evilly, wiggling his toes.

"Quiet, Cyborg," Robin said. "The movie's starting."

Beast Boy watched, transfixed, as _The Sixth Sense_ began to play.

-

"You know, I think something's wrong with Beast Boy," Cyborg murmured.

Beast Boy's stomach clenched as he edged towards the living room, the dark colors hiding him in the darkness of the hallway.

"He _has_ been a lot quieter lately," Robin mused. Robin's kept his voice soft as well, but the voice carried naturally.

Starfire said that Robin had once been a "bat of acro" in a circus. It had taken Beast Boy a moment to figure out that Starfire wasn't going back to the roots of the word on purpose, and then he had laughed.

He had noticed the amazing gymnastic stunts their leader pulled, but he had never realized that Batman hadn't trained him to do that.

Maybe the naturally carrying voice came from Robin's history in public appearances.

"I haven't noticed anything really bothering him," Raven's voice said. "When something _does_ get to him, he just buries it."

"That cannot be good for him. What if law enforcement discovers that he has been killing things and burying them? What shall we then do?" That unique voice, as well as lack of contractions and unique wording could only belong to Starfire.

_So, Star, you're in on this too._ Beast Boy thought.

Robin explained the figure of speech to Starfire, and then said something Beast Boy couldn't catch.

"It _is_ unhealthy," Raven said. "But I really can't ever tell what it is that bothers him. He's really good at suppression."

"I'd never thought…" Robin said. "If he's suppressing things, then…"

"Our friend Beast Boy has more to his personality than we originally thought."

_So glad you noticed. It only took you what, a year?_

Quietly, quietly, he slipped back into his room.

_I don't know where to go from here_, he thought. _But maybe… Maybe…_

He never finished that thought. Within a few days, he gave up trying to be himself.

It just wasn't worth the startled looks on their faces every time he did something they thought was out of character.

He slipped back into the light-hearted, stupid personality. It was just easier.

_I do this for you. Maybe someday… Maybe you'll be able to understand that. Maybe you'll be able to accept the "smart" me…_

But maybe not.

Fini


End file.
